Ansip slams Council position on phone roaming charges

Andrus Ansip, the European Commission’s vice-president for the digital single market, has strongly criticised national governments for trying to prevent the phasing out of mobile phone roaming charges from the end of this year.

Speaking at a European Voice event this evening (24 March), Ansip said the position adopted by the Council of Ministers earlier this month was “a joke”. The Council compromise was that phone carriers would be obliged to provide a small ‘basic allowance’ for roaming – ie, sending or receiving phone calls, texts or data while abroad – and beyond that the carriers could charge fees.

“I cannot support the very limited basic allowance of Council’s current reply to people’s call for the complete abolition of roaming charges – it is a joke,” he said. “We must definitely go further. We should remember our ultimate aim: the full and swift abolition of roaming surcharges – and not only their reduction.”

The member states’ position was drawn up by Latvia, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council, and was approved by a majority of member states.

Ansip also criticised the member states’ removal of all but two elements of the original telecoms package as put forward by the Commission last year. Member states stripped out new laws on broadband spectrum allocation, leaving only provisions on roaming and net neutrality.

“As you may have noticed, spectrum is still on [the Commission’s] agenda – but not on that of EU member states,” he said. “This is despite the significance, ambition and urgency that EU heads of state [and government] gave to the single telecoms market back in October 2013.”

Ansip defended the Council position on so-called ‘net neutrality’ – preventing operators from giving favourable treatment for broadband speeds to certain companies. The Council position would allow internet service providers to manage traffic under certain conditions to ensure continuity of service. Critics of the Latvian presidency’s approach say that it would open the door to a two-speed internet where large companies can pay for faster download speeds and bandwidth while smaller companies and users are stuck with slower speeds. But Ansip said the Council position is similar to the net neutrality rules recently adopted by the United States.

“We need to make sure that the internet is not splintered apart by different rules,” he said. “This is why we need common rules for net neutrality. Then, we need an open internet for consumers. No blocking or throttling.”

The telecoms proposal is now the subject of three-way negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament, with the Commission trying to preserve some of the spirit of its initial proposal.

A first round of negotiations was held last night (23 March), with the Parliament represented by Spanish centre-right MEP Pilar del Castillo and the Council represented by Latvia. According to people involved in the talks, the discussions were heated.

MEPs approved their version of the legislation last April – just seven weeks before the European Parliament elections. The Parliament position would end roaming charges for calls, messages and data sent or received from another EU member state from 15 December 2015.

Many MEPs campaigned during the elections on the pledge to end roaming, and for them it has become an issue of institutional pride. British MEP Sajjad Karim, from the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the Parliament, said: “I see a move developing among MEPs to make this an inter-institutional stand-off, where the Parliament is begining to take the view that it is down to us to be the voice of the citizens. National governments are simply not understanding where citizens are coming from.”

MEPs have tried to pressure member states by pointing out that several national leaders, including Britain’s David Cameron, Denmark’s Helle Thorning Schmidt and Italy’s Matteo Renzi, also promoted the vote to end roaming charges during last year’s European election campaign.

“Some of these leaders are facing national elections this year,” said Danish Liberal MEP Jens Rohde, a shadow rapporteur on the file. “We will remind their voters what they told them one year ago, if they have forgotten.”

“In my point of view they are only trying to protect their own companies, and protect the southern European big players who always used roaming as a cash cow,” he added. The biggest beneficiary of roaming charges in Europe have been the telecoms firms of Spain, Greece and other southern countries which attract large numbers of tourists from other member states.

ETNO, the European telecoms industry association, maintains that the wholesale market for connecting calls is too varied in the EU to establish a single market for mobile phone charges. “A coffee in Athens and a coffee in Berlin do not cost the same, neither do [phone tariffs],” said Alessandro Gropelli, head of communications for ETNO. “Our operators do not have one single network across Europe, there are still different conditions.”

GSMA, the global industry association for mobile telecoms operators, says it prefers the development of a basic roaming allowance. They point out that some mobile companies are already offering such options.

Tomorrow (25 March), the college of European commissioners will hold an orientation debate on the planned digital single market strategy, which is due in May. Ansip will hold a press conference following the debate.